The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi Season 7 spring line-up is already live and is furthering the season’s theme ‘Now and into the Future’.
In the first week of March in 2020, we were on the phone everyday with Kid Koala’s team asking should he come, should he get on the plane? Nobody knew what this [the pandemic] was going to become,” says Bill Bragin, the Executive Artistic Director at The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi.
But The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi Season 7 spring schedule is already live, and in-person, and Kid Koala is here – almost – with The Storyville Mosquito, his live animated graphic novel lighting up The Red Theater on 12 and 13 May.
“We’ve been waiting for this,” says Bill. “We co-commissioned it and we presented his previous work, Nufonia Must Fall, which was a huge hit.
He [Kid Koala] is a very generous, playful artist and so after two years we finally planned it for as late as we could in the season to protect the chance of what could happen.
”Bill describes The Storyville Mosquito as a big piece incorporating live film making in front of a live audience, with puppet theatre artists manipulating puppets on stage.
“Videographers are also on stage shooting the puppets; there is an editor who is editing it all in real time and Kid Koala is on stage with turntables and electronics, along with a string ensemble doing live scoring and live foleying.”
Concepts such as CinemaNA, the screening of diverse films from the Arab world, are constantly renewable, which Bill says creates a kind of framework to the spring programme.
“It’s an ongoing framework,” he says. CinemaNA, which returns in-person, is presented with the NYU Abu Dhabi Film and New Media Program, and is in partnership with Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi and The Arts Center.
“It’s great to screen films online, but when it is in-person, filmmakers can be present so there’s a chance to screen the work, have a chat and engage with the filmmaker and creatives, which is what sets CinemaNa apart from other many screenings around the country.”
Also among the stellar lineup is ElectroFest, an academic collaboration and a bi-annual festival curated by the university’s Film Program Head, Clare Lesser.
“A lot of the performers in ElectroFest are musicians on NYUAD’s faculty, as well as from the community,” says Bill.
“Clare premiers a lot of 21st century new work that is often being composed for her or she is looking at 20th century work. Clare has been conducting a lot of her own research on Karlheinz Stockhausen, a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important, but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries and known for his ground-breaking work in electronic music.
“She is also interested in the idea of archives and hauntology, a genre of music evoking cultural memory and the aesthetics of the past.
“This is not a lecture in pop music,” says Bill, “but more on the experimental side and in really smart adventurous music. Again, there are lots of conversations with the artists and composers and a lot of premiers; it is very much tied into some of the work that Clare teaches on campus as well.”
On Season 7 being in-person, Bill says that there’s nothing better than being in the same time and space as the artists and other audience members.
“We are thrilled to re-gather as an arts community and thrilled once again to welcome the community back in-person to The Arts Center and to the NYUAD campus.
The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi Season 7 spring line-up is already live and is furthering the season’s theme ‘Now and into the Future’.
For tickets and more information visit nyuad-artscenter.org
